Little by Little, School Lunch and Breakfast Menus Become Healthier

By Lee Adcock

When the lunch bell rings at Oconee County High School, the cafeteria fills up quickly. But it’s not pizza that the kids are clamoring for today. Some kids reach for the red and green apples above the serving line; others choose the little trays and baby carrots and cherry tomatoes. One girl asks if she can have the baked beans from the BBQ line with her hot dog.

This new range of healthy choices isn’t unique to Oconee County. Schools in Georgia – and all over the nation - are expanding their menus to meet the new requirements set by Michelle Obama’s Healthy Hunger Free Kids act.

What’s For Breakfast?

This year, the biggest changes for school systems have happened in breakfast programs. Biscuit sandwiches with chicken, sausage, and steak are still on the menu, but now the biscuits are whole grain. 

Not everyone loves them. “It doesn’t taste the same,” said Jaz Robins, a senior from Clarke Central High School. “And it looks weird.”

Schools now offer more fruits in the mornings, as well. Students can choose between peach cups or fresh fruit like pears, bananas and apples.  And, according to Cedar Shoals nutrition manager Kim Sweetser, many students will grab both.

Some less healthy options and regional favorites are also allowed, as long as 51 percent of the wheat products offered are whole grain. “A couple of times a week we’ll offer grits,” said Oconee County nutrition manager Susan Elsner. “We have access to some breakfast burritos, [and] we have whole grain honey buns.”

Of course, breakfast programs don’t have as much impact as lunch programs do.  On average, about 45 percent of Clarke County’s 12,500 students eat breakfast at school, while only 20 percent of the 6,800 students in Oconee County go to school for their morning meal. In contrast, roughly 80 percent of Clarke County’s students and 50 percent of Oconee County’s students eat a school lunch.

A Range of Options

Every day at lunch, students in both counties can choose between two vegetables and two fruits. Nutrition managers mix up the options as much as possible. For instance, an edamame and corn blend is surprisingly popular in Oconee County. “The retail name [for it] would be succotash!” said Elsner. “And kids would probably not be excited about eating succotash, but we’ve got a number of our student body who are excited about edamame.”

Leafy greens are a hit, too. “Anytime we have greens – turnip greens, collard greens, cabbage – it was a surprise that they were taking as much as they did,” said Sweetser.

Fresh fruits are harder to come by – in part because few are grown in Georgia during the school year. “If you think of a list of 20 fruits, you and I are probably going to come up with the same 20 fruits,” said Elsner.

“It’s really hard to find good seasonal fruit in the winter,” said Hilary Savage, the nutrition director of Clarke County. “You’re pretty much limited to pears and citrus. And the kids will get tired of that by February.”  

Main dish choices have also expanded. In addition to the two entreés that change daily, the lunch staff also provides pizza slices and salads as alternatives. Robins, the Clarke Central senior, shuns the salad. “I don’t think it looks all that sanitary,” he said. “I don’t normally get it, because I know people mix stuff in there, and they’ll accidentally drop stuff in there.”

Oconee County, on the other hand, provides several professionally packaged deli options, from chicken wraps to ham sandwiches, as well as reduced fat hot dogs with whole wheat buns.

The Skinny

At last count, approximately 35 percent of children aged 10 to 17 in Georgia were overweight or obese. That’s higher than the national rate of 31 percent. The Healthy Hunger Free Kids act was created to combat these rising obesity rates.

But Savage is dubious. “I don’t think you’ll ever be able to tie changes in school lunch to a reduction in childhood obesity,” she said. “The goal is improved academic performance. That’s what we’re about in the education world.”

What Savage didn’t mention was that more than 80 percent of Clarke Central High’s students are on the free and reduced lunch program. Or that, overall, about 35% of families in Clarke County are below the poverty level. So while obesity may be a multi-factorial issue, most of the students depend on the school to provide them lunch every day.

In Oconee County, however, school lunch participation is a different story. Only about 26% of Oconee County High’s students are on the free or reduced lunch program.  Students generally have more spending money, according to Elsner, and many go off campus for lunch.

“Until we can get the Longhorns, the Outbacks, the Chic-Fil-As, the Olive Gardens, the McDonalds, all those guys to buy in,” she said, “it’s going to be really, really hard for us to make huge headway.”